Secret Daytona
Secret Daytona
UP FRONT
David Edwards
HONESTLY, I’VE NEVER REALLY LIKED Daytona all that much, may the Beach Gods have mercy on my worthless, heathen soul.
This possibly has something to do with my first visit to Bike Week in 1978, when as a penniless university student (all my funds being tied up in a new Yamaha XS750 Triple-a man has to set priorities, after all...), I made the pilgrimage from Texas to Florida in time for one of the week-long monsoons that seem to ravage the so-called Sunshine State with annoying regularity. Didn’t help that my only shelter from the storm was a less-than-watertight pup tent and surplus Army sleeping bag wrapped in plastic garbage sacks. My new girlfriend, who’d flown in for the festivities on the promise of a romantic seaside weekend, took one look at the sodden accommodations and mouthed something I couldn’t quite make out over the din of my KOA campmates’ openpiped Hogs, though rudimentary lipreading allowed me to ascertain that she would almost certainly become my exgirlfriend. At least she had the class not to add, “...and the horse you rode in on.”
Even years later when I was hired by Cycle World, with a lavish travel & expense budget to abuse (glad I wasn’t the one paying $239 a night-three-night minimum-for a $59 hotel room that still reeked of last year’s Spring Break kegger), Daytona and I still didn’t see eye-to-eye. Too many loud pipes saving countless lives, too much bare epidermis that really should have remained covered, too much traffic all going nowhere at the same time, too much hassle.
That said, I now owe Daytona Beach an apology. As journalist Edward R. Morrow, quoting Shakespeare, once said in skewering Commie-conspiracist Joe McCarthy, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Daytona wasn’t the problem, I was.
This illumination came about by way of my recent knee surgery, which kept me off bikes for three months (scooters don’t count, do they, Doc?), and because we shipped our “Project 100” HarleyDavidson to Daytona.
I picked the bike up Wednesday morning and never set butt in my rent-awreck again until it was time to drive to Orlando International Sunday a.m. for the flight back to SoCal. Ran a tank of 91-octane through Project 100’s Twin Cam 88B each day, happy-hell, giddy-to be back on two wheels under cloudless skies and in 80-degree air. So, this is what it’s like if you live in a state that actually has winter, a bothersome season outlawed in California (though earthquakes, firestorms and mudslides, oddly, are not), and have to garage your ride for months at a time. No wonder you Northerners can’t wait for the first week in March to load up and head south.
In my on-bike euphoria, even Daytona Beach proper held allure. Some years I’ve avoided the Main Street scene and shore-hugging Highway Al A altogether-not worth the bother to see the same old stuff. But now I found myself wondering how far south the beach route would take me. Turns out about 10 miles, past the condo canyons, where the road ends at Ponce Inlet, home to the second-highest lighthouse in the U.S., a 175-foot tower of brick (1.25 million of ’em!) built in 1887. Once the only aid to navigation from St. Augustine to Cape Canaveral, the Ponce deLeon Light Station was decommissioned in 1970, but now has been lovingly restored. Out of deference to my new ACL, I declined to climb the 203 steps to the lighthouse gallery, but apparently the views are spectacular.
Early next morning, I had breakfast with Michael Lichter, nice guy and everyone’s favorite Harley photographer. He’s organizing a bob-job retrospective and photo show for the Journey Museum in Rapid City, South Dakota, this August, and wanted my input-well, that and my 1940 Indian Sport Scout bobber. He then invited me to tag along on a photo shoot of custom bikes that took us on “The Loop,” a 22-mile circuit of two-laners starting in Ormond Beach, just north of Daytona. An entertaining road under a canopy of trees and with curves even (!) in flatland Florida? Whodda thunk it?
Next surprise was the Daytona Beach Museum of Arts & Sciences, where Michael had a book-signing in conjunction with “The Era of the Motorcycle” a 70-bike exhibit alongside Italian etchings, Ming vases and Early American furniture. The eclectic display ran from Manx Norton to the “Liberty Bike,” a copper-clad monstrosity from the boys at Orange County Choppers. Impressive collection and hopefully a Bike Week tradition in the making.
Friday had me on Highway 92, headed 20 miles west to the quaint town of DeLand, where Jerry Wood holds his annual bike auction at Stetson University. For a refundable $100, you too, can get a bidder’s card and then sit on your hands while a 1949 Triumph 500 GP roller that would have made a great period custom is gaveled down for $4000, thereby saving your already tortured savings account-not to mention your impending nuptials to the lovely Miss Peggy. Some crazy prices on other Trumpets, though, as in $23,000 (plus 8 percent buyer’s fee) for a ’52 Trophy TR5?!
While in town, make sure to stop by the airport and see the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum, a grand name for basically two-bedroom base housing with a memorabilia collection and a tatty TBF Avenger in the backyard, but run by nice folks who’ll open up a half-hour early just because you showed up and give you a one-on-one tour of their nearby hangar.
Daytona’s biggest secret remains the 200-miler at the Speedway, seen by 70,000 people this year, despite a halfmillion in town for the week. But the new streamlined race schedule with Supercross Friday night under the lights and the Superbike finale Saturday afternoon rather than Sunday (a travel day for most Daytona-goers) is a big step in the right direction. Attendance was up 30 percent. Now, if someone can just get all five factory roadrace teams to compete in the same classes, we might really be on to something.
